Canon Peter Clark, the chairman of the school’s governors, said that her attack on incapable teachers “blinded by Leftist ideology” had dealt a fatal blow to the school. “The publicity that she generated was very unhelpful, which certainly didn’t help in terms of pupil recruitment,” said Canon Clark.

To begin with, she didn’t identify the school in question during her Conservative Party Conference speech about the shortcomings of state education. While she drew on her own experience as a teacher in a host of state secondary schools, she was talking about system-wide problems, not criticising any one school in particular.

Moreover, the Academy would not have been subjected to such intense media scrutiny if the school’s board of governors and headteacher had handled the situation better. If they hadn’t sent her home the day she returned to work and then forced her to resign, the story would not have had “legs”, as we say in the media. Yes, her remarks at the Conservative Party Conference might have resulted in the school receiving some scrutiny in the press, but only a fraction of the amount it eventually received had her employers handled the situation properly. It was their knee jerk reaction that caused the problem. They were so determined to punish her for speaking out of turn they didn’t give a thought to the impact their reaction would have on the school’s reputation.

Even if you’re not persuaded by this, Katharine Birbalsingh still doesn’t deserve to be vilified. Suppose she does bear the lion’s share of the responsibility for the fact that St Michael's and All Angels Academy ended up being put under the media microscope (which she doesn’t). Should prospective parents have been kept in the dark about the school’s shortcomings for the good of the school? Because the school’s problems became widely known, local parents were able to make a properly informed decision about whether to apply for places there next September – and decided not to. Only 16 named it as their first choice in the Common Application Forms they filled out last year. To complain that the school wouldn’t now be closing if Katharine hadn’t spoken up at Tory Conference is, in effect, to say it would have been better if prospective parents were kept in the dark in the hope that they’d apply for places from a position of ignorance.

Far from blaming Katharine Birbalsingh for the school’s closure, Canon Peter Clark should accept full responsibility. As the chair of governors, the buck stops with him. If a board of governors and a headteacher are presiding over a failing school, their job is not to try and conceal its problems from prospective parents in the hope of filling their roll, but to improve the school. A parent who is being asked to make a decision about whether to send his or her child to a school is entitled to know as much information about that school as possible.

Katharine Birbalsingh is a hero, not a villain. Every school needs a teacher like her, prepared to speak truth to power.